I am the chairman of Revolution PAC as well as the president and co-founder of the Social Security Institute (along with Mike Korbey). I also serve on the Advisory Board of Gold Standard 2012. Previously, I was chief economist to Jack Kemp at Empower America, former staff director of the congressional Joint Economic Committee, former vice president and chief economist of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and former Reagan White House adviser.

The American Experiment In Liberty Has Failed

It is, perhaps, a fact provocative of sour mirth that the Bill of Rights was designed trustfully to prohibit forever two of the favorite crimes of all known governments: the seizure of private property without adequate compensation and the invasion of the citizen’s liberty without justifiable cause…It is a fact provocative of mirth yet more sour that the execution of these prohibitions was put into the hands of courts, which is to say, into the hands of lawyers, which is to say, into the hands of men specifically educated to discover legal excuses for dishonest, dishonorable and anti-social acts.

______ H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: A Selection, pp. 180-82

The American experiment in liberty has failed. It is only a matter of time before people realize it. Official dogma exulting over the U.S. Constitution, which for so long was propagated through public schools, churches and government mouthpieces, will not forever withstand the exposure of the truth about American democracy now readily available on the Internet.

The greatest fear of America’s Founding Fathers has been realized: The U.S. Constitution has been unable to thwart the corrosive dynamics of majority-rule democracy, which in turn has mangled the Constitution beyond recognition. The real conclusion of the American Experiment is that democracy ultimately undermines liberty and leads to tyranny and oppression by elected leaders and judges, their cronies and unelected bureaucrats. All of this is done in the name of “the people” and the “general welfare,” of course. But in fact, democracy oppresses the very demos in whose name it operates, benefiting string-pullers within the Establishment and rewarding the political constituencies they manage by paying off special interests with everyone else’s money forcibly extracted through taxation.

The Founding Fathers (especially Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison, and James Monroe), as well as outside observers of the American Experiment such as Alexis de Tocqueville all feared democracy and dreaded this outcome. But, they let hope and faith in their ingenious constitutional engineering overcome their fear of the democratic state, only to discover they had replaced one tyranny with another. As one contemporary libertarian has put it :

“It is hard to think of other examples in history where so many checks and balances were placed upon centralized political power – and it is also impossible to think of a more dangerous and powerful government than the modern American leviathan. The abysmal failure of such a noble experiment should give all moralists pause. If the smallest possible government has grown into the largest conceivable government – within a few hundred years – it is hard to imagine what kind of theoretical system could conceivably control state growth in the future.”

Perversely, at the same time the U.S. Constitution was slowly unraveling and being brazenly rewritten by lawyers and judges over the course of two centuries, the founding document and the drivel spewed forth by judges and lawyers called “constitutional jurisprudence” took on an almost sacred aura, deluding most citizens into believing it was all succeeding marvelously.

A few people recognized the slow-motion failure of the Constitution right along, especially after the New Deal memorialized the dramatic alterations that had occurred since the War Between the States. For example, in a 1947 exchange of letters with Ludwig von Mises, journalist, war correspondent, and novelist Rose Wilder Lane wrote:

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In 1789, Africans were held in bondage, women were considered property, voting was primarily restricted to property owners, those accused of crimes had few recourse, several states had official churches and commerce was dominated by state chartered monopolies.

In 2012, an African-American is President, the Secretary of State is a woman, suffrage is universal, the Justice system isn’t perfect but those accused have far more rights, religious liberty is protected to a level unheard of anywhere else in the world, and the government actively works to thwart monopoly and provide a level playing field for free market competition.

Not only that, but central planning has largely been rejected as a means of accomplishing goals. The government more often turns to market solutions for collective problems, such as cap and trade of SO2 emissions, which pretty much ended the threat of acid rain, all the way down to ObamaCare, which accomplishes its goals by keeping the private insurance sector intact.

By virtually any measure you choose, Americans are freer now than they were in 1789. Do we still have work to do? Absolutely. But things are much better than they were.

The African slave trade was not established by the constitution, nor could it abolish it at that time. That is a non-starter. Women earned rights and that is universally still going, again, not a USA issue. We don’t have an official church but we have only Christian presidents and Christian congress persons, why? Because the mob is Christian. State chartered monopolies are nothing compared to the federal monopolies we see now. Look at how much money is spent by the industrial sectors on legislation in congress. It’s mind blowing. Having an African American president doesn’t make us more enlightened, it just means we’re still stuck in the collectivist mentality that Obama isn’t an individual, but a black. That’s your short coming for having to care. Emissions got exported with our jobs. Had nothing to do with cap and trade. Obamacare is one of the worst power grabs by the federal government ever conceived. Your idea of freedom is orwellian and frightening. We’re are more free if your idea of freedom is mandated insurance, a collapsing economy of consumerism and the ability to export your pollution to the developing world. We’re much less free if you actually know what freedom is. Next time you want to see how free you are, try some civil disobedience and see how far it takes you.

“In 1789, Africans were held in bondage, women were considered property, voting was primarily restricted to property owners, those accused of crimes had few recourse, several states had official churches and commerce was dominated by state chartered monopolies.

In 2012, an African-American is President, the Secretary of State is a woman, suffrage is universal, the Justice system isn’t perfect but those accused have far more rights, religious liberty is protected to a level unheard of anywhere else in the world, and the government actively works to thwart monopoly and provide a level playing field for free market competition.” [sic]

While I agree with your implication that these things you quote represent a poor “state of affairs”; your example serves to only reinforce the authors point. You do see that don’t you?

Yes Larry, your liberty is very important to all of us. We’ll just go throw ourselves in the Grand Canyon so we’ll be out of your way OK? That way you won’t have to listen to other people’s stupid opinions anymore.

Don’t worry, I’ll leave a list of our bank account numbers on your pillow before we go. That way you’ll have more liberty.

Maybe with our liberty you could hire mercenaries and seize control of the Homeowner’s Association? Then you make THEM cut your grass. That would teach that stupid majority not to tell you what to do.

This is a curious piece. Some would argue that the greatest defense we have against a tyranny of a minority is self-governance. These same folks would claim that the greatest liberty interest a people could have in any organization is the right to vote to determine the rules by which most of the folks in the organization want to live by. Opting out by moving to a different country is one solution but it is extreme especially since the dissatisfied can work within our system to change it, to improve it, for themselves and others.

It seems to me that the Constitution did a decent job of balancing the liberty interests of the majority with the liberty interests of the individual, by guaranteeing specific individual liberties to everyone in our society, including the right to compensation for takings of private property. Furthermore, the Constitution gives the electorate the right to amend or augment the Constitution itself.

Of course this will not please all of the people all of the time but if our constitutional democracy works as it was designed it should satisfy most of the people most of time. Without it, there would be no checks or balances on a ruling minority class.

Admittedly, our constitutional democracy does not always work the way it was designed but wouldn’t our time be better spent getting rid of the obstacles to its success than trashing it in its entirety?

“It seems to me that the Constitution did a decent job of balancing the liberty interests of the majority with the liberty interests of the individual, by guaranteeing specific individual liberties to everyone in our society, including the right to compensation for takings of private property. Furthermore, the Constitution gives the electorate the right to amend or augment the Constitution itself.” [sic]

You have highlighted a particular issue that the author has touched upon in his piece, for which he uses as support. As originally designed, the Constitution constructed a system of federal governance. Specifically, our constitution enabled a Constitutional Republic, NOT a Constitutional Democracy. Originally, only one House of the national government was electable by the general electorate. That is the “House of Representatives”. The founders limited their terms to four years with specifically because they feared the relative instability within a governance system that popular concerns would generate. The members of the Senate were to be elected by each of the state’s. Those Senators would have a six year term. They got a longer term specifically because they were NOT elected by the general electorate, and therefore were considered to be more insulated from the “whims of fancy” and highly-dynamic, emotion-laden, concerns of the general public. Additionally, the POTUS was not (and still not) a generally elected official. Again, these original mechanisms put in place by the Constitution served to limit (in a good way) the negative effects of a democracy. The U.S.A. was designed by the founders to function as a republic, which isn’t a democracy per-se.

That was then. The picture is different today. We have amended the Constitution, and have minimized the protections against the democratic effect known as “mob rule”. This was the Seventeenth Amendment. This amendment stripped the effectively stripped the states of their representation in the Federal Government. A “citizen” of one state can elect both their House and Senate representatives to the Federal Government. Because of the mobility of the citizen, any representation to the Federal Government imputed to the state by the citizens of that state is illusory at best. The person can move between states at will, meaning that the person can takes their “elective power” with them. A state assembly does not move, and therefore is more concerned with issues of the state (not the person). However, those issues are no longer represented in the Federal government. What is the significant issue with this outcome? I believe it is the erosion of the importance of the state’s rights. We are seeing a more powerful Federal government because of this erosion.

I think what the author is trying to convey is that our Constitutional Republic has devolved into a Constitutional Democracy (due to our modifications to and interpretations of the Constitution).

What an incredibly stupid post. Let’s talk about freedom, for a moment; what government is it that can tell you what color your home can be, where it has to be located on your property, what can be stored within it, what activities you can be allowed to partake in, and which persons may live there?

Hint: Not the Federal government, which is too far and too distant in almost every case to effectively curtail those freedoms, even if it wanted to. No, all that tyranny is brought to you by your local government, your city councils, your housing boards, your homeowners associations – precisely the governments that Lawrence Hunter thinks have our freedom and interests at heart.

Nonsense. Federalism is nothing more than the doctrine that “freedom” means being oppressed by your own neighbors. Federalism is the doctrine that, somehow, residents of Silver Spring, MD have more in common with the residents of Smith Island (pop. 400) than they do with the residents of Arlington, VA and should thus share representation with the former and not with the latter (and, indeed, that residents of the city between them should not be represented at all.)

Federalism has done more to oppress and disenfranchise the citizens of the US than any other mistake of the Framers aside from legal slavery, and it’s long past time that it was abolished. An American experiment has failed, and that experiment is Federalism. Time to dissolve the states and truly unite Americans.

Of all of the opinions expressed by the above comments and the author, I agree the most with ciphertext’s.

I believe we are at, or very close to, the tipping point of the “American Experiment.” As a smaller and smaller percentage of Americans pay any federal taxes and a larger and larger percentage receive federal government services, most people no longer understand, nor care to understand, the relationship between taxes and services, that these are the government’s income and outgo. In addition, the federal deficit has existed for about two full generations, and again, most people just don’t understand how damaging it is to the health of the country. The “Occupy …” movement shows just how out of touch some people are, blaming rich people for the problems of the poor, but I digress.

What I’m trying to say is that you can’t separate the political issues in the article from some of the wrong-headed economic policies currently being put forth in this country. We need fiscally-conservative politicians in Washington who understand that the federal government’s money is the people’s money and that it doesn’t belong to the politicians.

Also, it may be time to return the election of Senators to the state legislatures. I laughed at Rick Perry’s “Anti-Progressive,” for lack of a better term, ideas at the time, but this is one with which I’ve come to agree. I just know that we need Senators and Representatives who put the welfare of the nation of their own political welfare and the welfare of their districts and states.

This apocalyptic language is uncalled for. Freedom and liberty are not lost, or even in danger. Alex Knapp makes a good case, but you don’t even have to go back that far in history to find a remarkable increase in freedom, and liberty for “everyman”. Look back just over a century, and you find a world where millions worked in deplorable conditions, 60-70 hours a week, for a few cents an hour, with no paid vacations, weekends, or holidays, and not even a dream of retirement. They, and their children consumed unsafe and ineffective “medicines”, and meats that were laced with arsenic (to keep the rotting meat looking better, longer). These, and a hundred other situations were corrected by government laws and regulations.

Its worth noting that the advances that did away with these deplorable conditions, and increased the practical freedoms for the 300 million Americans, came in the teeth of criticism that the government was “destroying our freedom”, bankrupting whole industries, and signalling the end of the American way of life. The powers that be in business and industry didn’t voluntarily give up any of the improvements for ordinary citizens. They used evey scare tactic and hate tool, to defeat benefits for ordinary citizens.

As little as 125 years ago, we in the US lived very close to the jungle. Yeah, we had paved roads, and oil lamps, but we lived in an “every man for himself” world. It was you against, not only every other person, but in daily battle against big business and industry, just to survive. With no government to help you. You couldn’t drink the water, and you couldn’t breathe the air.

Equality was a terrible lie, and the notion that commoners could self govern has been disproven. It is time the people of the colonies ask Her Majesty for forgiveness and rejoin the rest of the family.

Excellent article and summary of how the Progressive Movement is destroying the American Experiment. The difficulty is the mythology of America – what people want to believe over what truly exists. David Bohm expressed the challenge we face in in description of our “thoughts.” Americans created the Progressive Movement and now we act as if the ideology it represents exists separate from us. See my new book, “From a Culture of Dependency to a Culture of Success.” – http://www.yswishnick.com

“ObamaCare”, although touted as “not taxation” was only found “constitutional” as a tax.

Americans aren’t necessarily “freer” now than they were in 1789. Americans are subject to modern societal norms which are comprised of constant criticisms based not on facts but pure conjecture with malicious intent. “Political Correctness” has contorted that which is important. Just because an individual is black does not qualify them to lead a nation, nor does the fact that someone is female qualify them to be secretary of state. Modern elections are simply popularity contests, not unlike those held in high school, where those with charisma win regardless of qualification or experience. Presidential debates should be perceived and conducted as job interviews, where experience and qualifications win out over charm and vogue.